Chris Selley’s Full Pundit: F-bombs away!

Schoolyard politicsThe Toronto Star‘s Heather Mallick sets out to defend New Democrat MP Pat Martin for using the dreaded F-word on Twitter, on account of (a) she thinks the issue in question (the purported death rattle of Canadian democracy) justified its use and (b) it’s good to have politicians who get angry and passionate about serious issues. Along the way, she says this: “I can’t talk dirty in columns even now, when people on TV talk more about vaginas than they do about ankles, and frankly you actually need ankles. Try going a day without ankles. Just try it.” Um … what? And then, back on topic, she says “Martin wasn’t being abusive to a person, which even I might object to.” Again: What? Who’s@LettingSmokeOut?, subject of Martin’s “f–k you” Tweet? Some kind of robot?

Speaking of bad behaviour, the Star‘s Tim Harper notes that the Conservatives appear “unable to step back, take a breath and govern like a majority, not a government which steps into the ring each day as if it could be back at the polls within months.” He provides several examples of legitimately ugly behaviour: Dean Del Mastro accusing Justin Trudeau of being a bad Catholic; Vic Toews suggesting Joe Comartin is pro-criminal because he dared work as a defence lawyer. What we don’t quite understand is why Harper thinks things might calm down after an extended winter break. What if the Conservatives are “unwilling” to tone it down, rather than “unable”? After nearly six years, is it still too soon to assume that this is just who they are?

On his Maclean’s blog, Paul Wells notes that the government has been unable to keep the existence of its foreign-policy review under wraps. Far from an embarrassment, however, Wells thinks this is welcome news, considering how frequently this government has been “blindsided … by the big cruel world.” And there’s more good news, apparently, on the foreign affairs front. “It would be hard to overstate the overdue goodwill [Foreign Affairs Minister John] Baird has begun to win for himself and this government simply by turning up at receptions on the Ottawa diplomatic circuit,” Wells reports.

Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt argues that an end to supply management in the dairy industry any time in the next decade is simply “wishful thinking,” on account of the Conservatives need the rural Ontario vote and the dairy industry lobby is disproportionately powerful to the 13,000 farmers it represents. So the job, clearly, is to change people’s minds. Will someone with very deep pockets please launch a campaign against this “anachronistic, bloated, unfair and regressive system”? We’re talking about offering every Canadian a close to 50% discount on basic staples. Shouldn’t really be a tough sell.

TheGlobe and Mail‘s editorialists note that the Indian, Turkish and Mexican governments fulfill access to information requests vastly better than the Canadian government, and gently suggest Ottawa could do better. Too right. What an #$&!$ disgrace, as Pat Martin might say.

There are two ways to look at the government appointing Bob Paulson as head of the RCMP, Gary Mason argues in the Globe. The pessimistic view is that he “is a product of the troubled organizational culture he is being asked to fix” and that there is “no compelling evidence that he did much of anything to address the [Mounties’] deep and systemic problems.” We wish him well and hope for the best, but until there is evidence to the contrary, this is really the only view worth having. The idea that the RCMP is unsalvageable isn’t new, but over the last few years there has been a significant and justified collapse in public confidence in all police forces. Paulson’s task — fixing the RCMP and convincing Canadians that it has been fixed — may well be impossible no matter who he is.

On rights and freedomsThe Calgary Herald‘s Licia Corbella argues that legalizing assisted suicide has led to horrible abuses — “murder,” to her mind — in the Netherlands, and that the Royal Society of Canada’s contention to the contrary leaves it “completely discredited.”

The Ottawa Citizen‘s Dan Gardner, however, accuses the slippery-slopists of assuming “there was no euthanasia in the Netherlands before it was legalized,” and that none of the horrible things they foresee are currently happening in Canada. According to Gardner, Dutch data shows that over time, the rates of the sort of unfortunate events Corbella worries about don’t rise significantly, if at all. The problem, in his view, is that Canadians prefer to live in false knowledge of happy facts than tackle tough issues through policy or regulation, as the Dutch prefer.

George Jonas, writing in the National Post, accuses the Frontier Centre for Public Policy of launching an insufficiently basic case for students to be allowed not to join their universities’ student unions. The FCPP suggests the current situation might violate the Charter, for example, and argues “none of the arguments that are used to justify compulsory student unionism meet” the threshold for restricting the freedom to associate. “Surely, it shouldn’t be necessary to make a case for ending involuntary associations in free societies,” Jonas writes. “They should be ended because they’re involuntary.” We absolutely take his point, and tend to agree — but we’re not 100% sure anyone’s freedom of association has really been violated in the cases Jonas presents. No one is forced to attend university (let alone a university), or to take a job at a company that will entail union membership and the payment of dues, if he doesn’t want to.

On his Maclean’s blog, Colby Cosh explores an Occupist analogy that had crossed our minds: The semi-permanent Falun Gong protests that exist near various Chinese embassies and consulates. Interestingly, it turns out there’s legal precedent that the Occupists might use, and indeed are using— in British Columbia, anyway — that protects politically-motivated erections on public land.

The Globe‘s editorialists note the same precedent, and that of some anti-cruise-missilists who maintained a small encampment on Parliament Hill in the mid-1980s. “It’s good to live in a country where the courts protect the right to dissent,” says the Globe. “Good, but a little ridiculous at times. A constitutional right to build an eyesore on public property?” Oh, boo hoo. Look, we agree there are serious practical concerns with the idea of an indefinite occupation of public land — ultimately, it’s untenable. But when it comes to freedom of association, we tend to ascribe to the same principle as freedom of speech: More is better. So get in there, bankers and plutocrats. Pitch your tents! Play your guitars! Chant your chants!

Duly notedConrad Black, writing in the Post, quite rightly defends the beaver against those who foolishly imagine another beast would serve better as a Canadian symbol. Castor canadensis is adorable, industrious, indefatigable and (as the United States is currently finding out) prone to travel — a “natural engineer” and “relatively hygienic” to boot. Has “anyone has ever been described as ‘working like an eagle’ or ‘busy as a lion,’ ” Black asks, “unless they were preying on the defenceless, or, respectively, overcome by lust or narcolepsy?” As for the polar bear, which some have suggested as a replacement, Black quite rightly turns up his nose. “It is ill-tempered, dangerous, hostile to humans, indolent, and emphasizes the familiar caricature of Canada as an Arctic wasteland.” Quite right. Long live the beaver, urban hipster of the hinterland!